Have you noticed lately that there are more and more websites with the Facebook “Like” button and the Facebook “Share” button? There are many reasons why this is happening, and those reasons will be explained in details.

First, let’s go over some facts:

Facebook is the second most visited website on the web, and it is just right behind Google.

In Facebook, anytime when a friend of yours has updated his or her Facebook status, it will show up on your newsfeed.

If somebody has 1,000 friends on his list, and he hits the “Like” button on one of your updates, then all 1,000 of his friends would see that he has liked your update, and some might take a look at it, and perhaps hit the “Like” button as well.

What does this all tell you? If I place a Facebook “Like” or “Share” button on my site, and you (with 2,000 friends) thought that my site was very interesting, then there is a possibility that you will hit the “Like” button or share the site with your friends. Afterwards, all your friends would be able to see a link to my site in their newsfeed.

Almost every webmaster is eligible for this feature. Who is not eligible for such feature? If your website contains pornography, gambling, or anything illegal, then you are not eligible. You cannot use the feature in a way that is harmful, deceptive, or in any way that is objectionable to Facebook. Facebook will not allow webmasters to use the feature for online advertising. For example, you cannot put the “Like” button on a squeeze page for your product that you want to sell.

Why is social media becoming a trend for webmasters to get traffic? Let’s say you have a blog that talked about the discovery of a flying dog. Do you think people would search randomly on the internet for flying dogs, or would people find your site because somebody they knew told them about this site that is showing flying dogs? In order for people to discover your site, you will rely heavily on social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace. It can go viral in a matter of minutes when one person discovers your site because if that person finds your site interesting, then that person will share with all the people they know. You can think of it as a snowball effect, and sooner or later, you will end up with thousands of unique traffic to your website.

Some webmasters had experienced 100,000+ unique hits within an hour because of social media traffic. The word-of-mouth spreads like wildfire, and some websites had experienced temporary shutdown issues because of the large amounts of bandwidth in such a short period of time.

Other webmasters who found your site through social media sites might end up linking to your site so you end up with free links for doing almost nothing. Some webmasters believe that social media will soon dominate over search engines in terms of getting traffic to their sites.